


Astray

by soranokumo



Category: Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Canon - Original Game, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-30
Updated: 2013-05-30
Packaged: 2017-12-14 11:45:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/836528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soranokumo/pseuds/soranokumo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tifa deals with drift in a post-Meteor world. (Original FFVII game canon only.) Tifa x Cloud, Tifa x Rude. Other implications depending on your interpretation. Some not-really-explicit sex, some explicit language.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Astray

And it wasn’t even that he had left that hurt her the most. It was that, even after all that time, they had never talked about it, about what had happened. Tifa could tell it was there on his mind, on the tip of his tongue, more than once, and it was on hers as well. But in the end, neither of them could say anything. And in the end, he was gone one morning, and all that he had left behind was the chocobo doll he’d had made from real feathers from his own birds, for Marlene.

She’d stared at it for a long time, watching the yellow and golden feathers gleaming in the early sunshine. Tifa stared, and didn’t know what to do. She couldn’t cry, not this time, and as hard as she tried she couldn’t be angry with him, either.

They had tried. They both had, equally. It was just time for them both to stop pretending.

***

The Highwind was hovering a short distance away, and it gave a strange background noise to the otherwise still evening. Midgar stood like some silent sentinel in the distance. Cait Sith had been shut off since everyone else had left, so they didn’t know what was going on in the city, but perhaps it didn’t matter.

Perhaps none of it mattered anymore, not with the red orb of Meteor hanging over their heads, coloring the night sky with crimson.

It was still chilly enough at night she’d almost suggested going back to the Highwind, sleeping somewhere inside the ship, but Cloud had said that the outside was good enough, and when she thought about it, he was right. Tifa thought it might be defiant, even, to do what she’d wanted under Meteor. Let Sephiroth know what she thought of him, thought of all this, that he was nothing. Nothing was more important than this, than her moments with Cloud, her moments making more memories with him. She deserved this; they deserved this, and not even Sephiroth could take this away from them, no matter what happened.

And so when Cloud had moved to wrap an arm around her shoulders, to comfort as well as to help her ward off the chill, she’d braced herself and turned her head and kissed him, warm and soft on the lips. Cloud hadn’t reacted, at first, just seemed surprised, but that in itself wasn’t a surprise—he was always that way. But when she kissed him again, he opened up to her, and when she straddled his lap he didn’t complain.

They made love, she told herself. It wasn’t desperate sex. It wasn’t some kind of validation of life in the face of overpowering evil. It was love. She was making love with the one person in the world who understood where she had come from, who—

***

He never spoke a name, when he came. She always made sure, in her room above Seventh Heaven, that he knew who she was thinking about when she came. But Cloud was always so silent. He had always been that way.

***

She started to wonder those nights when he was out all the time on the bike, or when he’d venture off to the Chocobo Ranch to see to his birds. It was amusing, at first. Boys and their toys. Boys and their big feathery companions. It was all fine, until the one time she went with him to the ranch, and one night walked in to see him smiling—smiling!—at one of his birds, singing some strange little song from Nibelheim. Then she realized she was jealous of a great big feathered chicken, and she laughed at herself, and joined him.

But he never sang any strange little songs around her. He never… gods… he never smiled. He never laughed.

What the hell was wrong with him?

***

“We never really talked about it much, after everything,” Tifa said one night, putting a drink down in front of him, and then crushing mint leaves so they sprinkled down, fell on top, released their flavor into the mix. Cloud watched her, knew just as well that her beautiful hands could punch a man’s skull in just as easily as they crushed mint leaves for drinks, and just nodded. “You know what I mean, don’t you?”

“You mean the Lifestream,” he said, and she shook her head.

“Well… not exactly… but all the time before that, too. Before… in Nibelheim.”

Cloud looked at her, his face betraying nothing. Again. “You… saw enough, didn’t you?”

“Maybe, but… don’t you want to talk about it? At all?”

He shook his head, looked down at the drink, took a sip. “I… don’t really know what to say. It was hard, back then. And my memories… aren’t really the most accurate, are they?”

She started fixing her own drink. “You’re right… just forget it.”

He shook his head. “No, is there something you want to talk about? It’s all right, you know. You can tell me anything.”

Tifa thought about it, then finally said, “You said, on the Highwind, that one time… that you had to do it, that you were doing it for a very personal memory of yours. What was that?”

Cloud took another sip, but he was looking down at the countertop, not her. “That… You know that. What that is.”

She dropped a few ice cubes in her drink, something girly, fruity, and with a hell of a kick. She hadn’t thought up of a name for it yet. “Actually, I don’t. You never said.” She pouted at him. “You never say anything.”

“I don’t?”

“Well, you ask about the business and the weather and whether or not Reno caused me more trouble. You talk about the birds and you talk about Marlene and whatever projects the city needs working on. You talk about all those things, but you never really talk about us. About who I am to you. Who you are to yourself. You never—” And she stopped, took another sip when she realized her eyes were starting to burn.

And it hurt, when his hand came down over hers, his fingers curling around hers gently, and she had to remember that although her fist could punch in a man’s skull, Cloud alone had killed a god… not once but twice.

“You always hold me so gently,” she said, and hid her face behind her other hand, “but you never…”

“Tifa. I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Tifa…”

***

He had pleaded with her before, she realized, as she tied a ribbon around the chocobo doll. Little touches like that—Cloud had even thought ahead, had left it behind, a little pink ribbon, just like… just like hers, really.

But he had pleaded with her, in his own way. His apologies, his broken attempts at trying to tell her—something. But what had it been? Why couldn’t he have just said something?

Or was it really just about her, all this time?

***

He left, but he hadn’t changed his phone number.

“Are you doing all right?” she asked. She could hear a voice, occasionally, around him. He was somewhere around people, then, at least.

“I’m all right. I’m eating.” He paused. “It’s nowhere near as good as yours, though.”

“You could always stop in for a meal,” she teased him.

“Heh. No… no. Not yet. I think it’s too soon for that.”

“Well, she’s going to miss you, you know. Barret, too, though he won’t say it.”

“It’s all right. I’m sorry I just left it behind like that.”

Again, another apology. She was starting to understand. “It’s all right,” she said, and was surprised when she realized she meant it, this time. Really meant it. She was starting to understand. “It’s all right, I’ll take care of it.”

“I know you will,” he said, and something in his voice was wistful. “You’re always taking care of everyone… Tifa. You should take care of yourself, too.”

She bit her lower lip, and looked out from the window, at the snow starting to fall, at the white flakes building up against the window pane. “And you, too, Cloud. You have to take care of yourself, now, since I can’t… I can’t.”

“I’m all right,” he repeated. “Just worry about yourself for now, Tifa.”

Her lips quirked into a strange little smile. “Not like I have much of a choice, now, do I?”

***

The Turks weren’t regulars, exactly. They didn’t come in on the same days, and Tifa knew for a fact that Reno spread his gil around all the bars, but Reno and Rude weren’t always together, and Rude seemed to like coming into the Seventh Heaven even without Reno around. He liked to sit at the same place at the bar, and it got to the point that all of the other patrons recognized him, and if someone happened to be at that particular stool, they got up as soon as he came in and went to another seat.

He liked top shelf whiskey, but he didn’t always order it, sometimes going for a younger single malt. And he typically didn’t say much, though when he did open his mouth he was polite enough.

“So why doesn’t Elena or Tseng ever come in?” Tifa asked him one day, handing him his whiskey. It was later in the evening, slower. She’d have to start shoveling some of them out soon.

“The director is busy,” Rude said with a shrug. “Elena… doesn’t come.”

“I thought liking bars was a requirement for a Turk,” she said, teasingly. “Even Vincent likes to drink.” Rude grunted, then nodded, and Tifa said, “It’s just this bar, isn’t it? She doesn’t still blame us for what happened to Tseng, right?”

Before Rude could answer, the door opened and Reno stomped the snow off his boots as loudly as possible, before flinging himself onto the stool beside Rude. He spun around for a moment before facing Tifa and pointing at Rude.

“I’ll have what he’s having.”

“Reno, you’re already drunk,” Tifa said. “You know my rules about that.”

“I am not drunk! I walked straight to the bar, didn’t I?”

“That’s how I could tell—stop spinning! You’ll make yourself sick.”

“Awww, Tifa, don’t take the fun out of it—and don’t look at me like that, partner.”

Rude sighed. “Just give in. It’ll be easier.”

***

Cloud came in from the alley, sighing softly as he closed the door, and Tifa straightened from the doorway to the kitchen.

“Was it that bad?”

“Not bad,” Cloud said, shaking his head. “Just… Reno. Sometimes he just doesn’t take the hint.”

She giggled. “You’re not the one he’s trying to grope.”

Cloud’s face flushed at that, and he walked by with a mutter about needing to shower to wash the Turk off of him.

***

Marlene was running around Seventh Heaven with the chocobo doll in her hand, making little racing or flying sounds. Why she thought a chocobo could possibly sound like a motorcycle or a small airplane was anyone’s guess, but perhaps it made it more exciting. She certainly seemed happy when she chirped out a loud, “KWEH!” at the bottom of the stairs, before dashing up them.

Barret chuckled. “Can’t believe he used some of the feathers offa his own birds for that.”

Tifa leaned against the bar, arms crossed against the top. “Well, he says they do shed them naturally, you know. It’s not like he plucked them. He loves them too much to do something stupid like that.”

“Weird spiky ass.” But it sounded more like a term of endearment rather than an insult, which was about right for Barret, and he grinned. “So where the hell he at, anyway?”

“He went away for awhile,” Tifa said. Barret straightened immediately, his expression a bizarre mixture of affronted and concerned.

“What.”

“He went away,” Tifa said with a shrug.

“Why the hell…?”

“Well… what does it matter, really?” she said, struggling to keep her voice from shaking. It was easier when Reno was just harassing her about his favorite bouncer being out of the bar. It was easier when she was just tying a ribbon around a chocobo doll. But Barret was… “He left. It… It was about time, I think.”

“About time—” Barret started, when Marlene came down, holding the chocobo and staring.

“Mr. Cloud’s room is empty!” she gasped. “I was going to race Goldy into his room, but it’s empty!”

Tifa rested her head against her palm. It didn’t take long. One moment she was quiet, the next she was crying, and Barret had an arm around her shoulders and Marlene was hugging her leg. She didn’t know how long she spent like that, but finally she started talking, and she was surprised when it all came out the way that it did. All of it.

***

Cloud’s arms came around her as she settled against him, panting quietly. The sheen of sweat would get chilly in the cold air soon enough, and he reached with an arm, grabbed an edge of blanket, drew it up over them both. She closed her eyes, rested her head against his chest, listened to his heartbeat. One of his hands stroked her hair, and she relaxed.

“You’re so wonderful…” she murmured. He didn’t say anything, but that was like him.

It was only after several minutes passed and her body came back to semi-working order that she shifted to his side, curled up against him, his own body shifting automatically to accommodate her own. It was then that, like so many times, she saw the scar on his chest, and, without knowing why, she touched it with her hand.  
He shuddered, his whole body, and she glanced up at his face in alarm when he actually drew away.

“Cloud?! Cloud—I’m sorry, I didn’t—”

“N-no, it isn’t that,” Cloud said, looking away from her, his left hand gripping his hair. “It isn’t…”

She watched as he stood up, walked to one of the windows, planted his hands against the sill, gripped it so hard the wood creaked. And her eyes fell on the scar on his back, mirroring the one on his front. Cloud gasped, leaned his head against the window.

“…Why…?” And his voice was quiet, distressed, and Tifa looked down. Her own scar from that blade had long since faded. The spells Zangan had used hadn’t healed her, but the doctors in Midgar had worked hard. But she didn’t get the same reaction—her body didn’t remember the pain so strongly as Cloud obviously did.

“Cloud,” she said, finally, “he’s gone. He can’t hurt you anymore.”

***

He didn’t say anything that time, either. But that was like him.

***

She had spilled to Barret and Marlene, grateful that the little girl wouldn’t understand everything that she talked about, though she was smart enough she might bother Barret about it later, and after a little convincing from Barret she had decided not to open the bar that night. After she saw the two back off to the station to go to Kalm, she tried calling him again. This time, he didn’t answer, and she tried a few more times, until finally she stood on the Seventh Heaven’s doorstep, staring at the closed sign, listening to the phone ring. It went to voicemail, and she sighed, flipped the PHS unit shut.

“You have the night off?”

Tifa blinked at the sound of that voice, turned and saw Rude standing at the bottom of the steps, though he was easily tall enough he didn’t have to lift his head much to look at her eyes. Or at least she thought he was looking at her eyes; his shades made it hard to tell. “Y-yeah,” she said, tucking the PHS unit away inside her coat pocket. “I thought maybe about taking a break… for awhile, anyway, and Barret told me it would be a good idea.”

“I agree,” Rude said, and hesitated just a moment. “Reno was an ass the other night. Can I make it up to you?”

That made her blink, and then she grinned. “He’s always an ass. Are you going to make up for those other times, too?”

He grinned back, just a little smirk. “It would be impossible… but I wouldn’t mind trying.”

***

It became a thing, and she knew after that first night that it was a date, but it still seemed so strange to her… that she’d go from trying to punch the Turks’ faces in to serving them booze to dating one of them. She got home and she was giddy; she poured herself a drink and giggled up the stairs to her room. She slipped out of her shoes, set her drink down on the nightstand, fell back onto her bed with a happy sigh… and she realized she was happy. It wasn’t just a make-believe or a fairy tale happiness, but a real one, like the kind she had before… before everything.

It was a good day off. She needed more of those.

***

Tifa turned and kicked one beast in the jaw, watching as the head snapped back with an audible crack. She turned her head, watching as a bunch of troopers tried to shoot down one of the flying birds, saw Vincent calmly walk by and shoot it in the head and the heart, two shots, as easily as that. He moved beside her, nodded.

“Glad you happened to be here for this,” Tifa said, catching her breath and watching as one of the few active SOLDIERs came by, shouting to the troopers to go to a new position. “How is it going?!”

The SOLDIER, a First Class by the color of his uniform, ran up to them and nodded. “We’ve affirmed that the worst of it’s over now, Miss Lockhart. There’s a group left, but they’re contained. Troops are there now for support as we finish them off, and a clean-up crew is coming in soon to take care of the bodies.” He saluted them both. “We appreciate your support.”

Tifa just smiled at him. “You helped keep us all safe. Thank you.” Another nod and the SOLDIER took off running again, and Tifa turned to see Vincent looking away, into the darker ruins of the plate from which the monsters had emerged. “What is it?”

“Just a suspicion,” Vincent said, then looked back at her. “Cloud knew they were coming. There was a larger one on the way. It isn’t here, so he must have stopped it by now.”

“Cloud…?! Why didn’t he tell us?”

The crimson gaze was unreadable, as always. “He told Reeve; that’s how the Shinra were able to react so quickly. He told me, since I was on my way in. I believe he expected you would be told, and by that point he didn’t wish to give the larger monster more of a head start.”

“Oh…”

“He wasn’t doing it to avoid you, Tifa.”

She blinked up at him at that, but Vincent was staring into the ruins again. “You… You know about that, huh?”

“It would be difficult for all of Avalanche not to be aware. But when I spoke with him, he said he didn’t have time if he was going to stop the monster, and cut off abruptly.”

Tifa hadn’t realized she’d tensed up until he said that, and she relaxed. She looked into the ruins. “Well, then… I hope he is all right.”

He started into the ruins. “I’ll find out.”

***

“It’s not… not that I want him to, you know, be around all the time anymore,” Tifa said, her voice slurring a bit as she drank more of her girly, fruity drink with a kick that didn’t have a name yet. Rude patted her back. “It’s just… just I want him to be, you know, a friend still…” She pushed some of her hair back, looked up at her boyfriend. “I’m sorry. It’s just stupid. He should have told me, you know? You, me, we could’ve been having fun soooo much longer.”

He chuckled at that. “That’s true.”

“Anyway, it’s been half a year. Vincent said everything was fine when I last spoke with him, but… you know? This is when I start to worry.”

“He’s fine,” Rude said, and took a sip of his drink. “He’s Cloud Strife. If Sephiroth, Meteor, the Lifestream couldn’t kill him… what could hurt him now?”

“Yeah, right?” She sat up then, nodded. “Hey, let’s finish these and then go dancing s’more.”

***

Later in the mail she received a small card, with a long black feather tucked inside, smelling faintly of chocobo. She grinned a bit, opened the card to watch as a small Wutai pearl rolled out, also dark in color and pretty. There were no words, but she thought she understood, now. Cloud was telling her where he had been, in his own way, and she had heard from the others. He would still come by Midgar—it was odd, how he always seemed to know when the Mako levels were going to spike, causing more monsters to show up—but they usually didn’t see each other. The last time, they were in the middle of fighting the monsters, so they didn’t get much time for idle chatter, and he was gone again just as quickly when they were done. But there had been something strangely familiar about it, too, something comforting in just doing something like that again.

He had started sending her the wordless cards after a year had passed, every so often, and each time there was a little something inside. And, just like him, it was something she could use. Herbs from up north around Bone Village, good for spicing up her cooking; a chocobo feather from when he’d been dealing with the birds again, which could sometimes help ward monsters away during her own excursions out of the city; once a small fossil, something excavated from the Planet studies team in Cosmo Canyon, with the hollow center that made it perfect for the small candle that came with it; a pressed flower, which could have been from anywhere, really, she didn’t know enough about flowers to know… but those she always took with her to the church, where she found the Buster Sword guarding the flower patch, and she always put the pressed flower petals there.

Tifa finally listened to Rude’s good sense and hired some help to run the bar, and with the money she’d built up and some leftover funds from her time with Avalanche she started up a dojo. Rude was her first student, of course, and more than once their early training sessions had ended in something that had her giggling to herself in the showers afterwards, but then other students showed up and they couldn’t just engage in “training sessions” anymore. But that was okay, too.

They still had their date nights for that, after all.

***

Marlene bounced on her toes. “Lookit all the ribbons!” she said, turning around in a little circle. “This’ll be great. Everyone’ll be here, right, Papa?”

“I think so,” Barret said, watching as Marlene tried to creep up on Nanaki, who was standing guard over her small collection of presents in the corner of Seventh Heaven. Nanaki opened one eye and lashed his tail, and she giggled, ran away. Barret looked over to Tifa, who came out of the kitchen seeming quite proud of herself. “Isn’t that right, Tifa?”

“I think so,” she repeated. “You know how some of our friends are…” But she said it with a grin, and when she saw the other guests come in she thought she was right. Yuffie came in closer to the actual time of the party, but everyone else was already there, of course, except for—

The sound of the motorcycle gave it away. Nanaki’s ear flicked and he sat up, and Marlene laughed and went running toward the door, jumping down the stairs several steps at a time.

The motorcycle pulled up, some sleek, black monstrous thing that could easily hold Cloud and some of his swords and then some, and Cloud kicked the stand down and pulled off his helmet. He stood up from the motorcycle in time to catch Marlene in his arms and give her a hug; he laughed and put her down, and Tifa stepped out with Barret and one of the others, and she saw what she had begun to suspect.

Marlene was celebrating her twelfth birthday. Seven years had passed since Cloud had left her, and although Tifa knew her face had matured a bit, Cloud hadn’t changed at all. Like Vincent, he hadn’t changed at all. The face that looked up at the others as Marlene dragged him to the door by the hand was the same one that had led them through the North Crater.

“He came, he came, I told you he’d come!”

“Hey, if you keep pulling me away, I won’t be able to get your present,” he said, but she giggled.

“You are my present!”

She finally let him go when Barret came forward; the two shook hands and exchanged nods, and Cloud repeated the exchange with Cid before squatting down to scratch Nanaki behind the ears. Then he turned and let Yuffie give him a hug, and let Cait Sith clamber up on his shoulders as he exchanged a brief hello with Vincent, and then Cloud turned to Tifa.

He started to open his mouth.

“Don’t even start to say ‘I’m sorry,’” she warned him, and Barret chuckled as Cloud’s mouth snapped shut. Instead, he just smiled.

“You’re right. But it’s good to be back.”

_It’s good to see you._

She understood, she heard the real words, and grinned back. “Marlene, why don’t you show your present the new dojo while I finish up the cake?” she suggested, and Marlene grabbed Cloud by the hand.

“C’mon, Mr. Cloud, maybe I’ll show you! Miss Tifa and Mr. Rude showed me how to throw someone the other day!”

“Did they?” Cloud said, letting himself get dragged off, and before they passed into the next room he flashed a small smile back over his shoulder at Tifa, Cait Sith holding onto his other shoulder for dear life as Marlene pulled him along.

“You okay?” Barret said, quietly, beside her, and she nodded.

“Yeah, actually… I am.” She beamed. “It’s all right, now.”

And it was.

**Author's Note:**

> Written in May 2013.
> 
> This is another one of those fics that I've tried to write off and on for several years but finally worked itself out. I'm not sure if it was my most recent (ongoing) playthrough of FFVII that helped with that, or what, but here it is.
> 
> I probably could have gone a bit more into Tifa's relationship with Rude, but really this fic is more of a look at a possibility of a relationship with Cloud, post-game.


End file.
